Red Midnight
by Mister Vix
Summary: Complete. Superstitions, old legends. Fear of the Wolf, fear of the Moon. Such things are not for a reploid to heed...are they?
1. Sudden Bite

Red Midnight

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Chapter 1:

Sudden Bite

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Disclaimer: I do not own Megaman-X.  Any original characters I happen to use are mine, however.

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Author's Notes: Yeah, I decided to put it back up.  Wellbydoo.

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"Catch me if you can, buddyboy!" Zero howled wildly, revving up the chaser's motor.  His fellow Hunter grinned as he did the same, and then the pair of them rocketed away.  

It was the third race they'd held that week; they seemed doomed to never have an actual winner for their "Third Annual Chase Rase," as the last two times, one of the two competitors had hit a fault in the ground at somewhere over 600 m.p.h., resulting in the chaser being crumpled into a useless little ball of scrap, and usually starting a nice bonfire as well.

"All shall bow to the _mastah!!_" the Red Hunter cackled.  He was ahead of the Blue by a full two yards, his chaser screaming along the flattened grasses at a blurring speed.  They had gotten a late start to their race—the sun was already setting, turning the blank grasslands a bloody color—but neither one of them would care to brake for nightfall.  X had excellent nightvision, and Zero could simply flick to life the headlights on his chaser.  His naturally acute reflexes would take care of anything suddenly looming out of the darkness.

X swung his chaser around, dodging over a small hillock, and pulled up astride of the blonde reploid, whooping as he jetted ahead.  Zero followed him, roaring his chaser to even greater speeds, his hair streaming wildly behind him.  No way was he going to let the blue bugger win this race!

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The chasers had been going strong for an hour.  Since the metallic beasts' fuel was composed almost entirely of oxygen, they could keep going almost indefinately, as long as they were given a recharge at least once every 24 hours.  

In the darkness, Zero couldn't see the sudden drop in terrain, where it let into a small gulley.  He did notice, however, when the front tire of his chaser plummeted out from below him, causing the whole thing to buck, sending him soaring from his seat.  

"_YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_" he screeched, soaring wildly through the air, until the sound was cut off abruptly as he smashed into the turf, a loud metallic crunch accenting his landing.  He skidded across the dirt a few feet, causing a grating, whining sound, before finally coming to a stop.  "..._argh_..."

X pulled the front of his chaser up into a wheelie, doing a jump over the dip in the earth, and jammed the thing to a stop, being tossed roughly from the thing as its speed cut out and his did not.  As soon as he had recovered his feet, he rushed over to his fallen friend, crouching down and waving a hand before Zero's blank face.

"Are you alive, Z-man?" he asked.  He wasn't very serious, because, despite the wonderfully doomed attempt at flight the Red Hunter had just made, he knew that it couldn't really make much of a dent in him.  

"...I think so..." Zero finally mumbled, forcing open his brightly blue eyes.  He blinked unseeingly for a few moments, trying to stabilize the night sky above, which kept swimming about in a murky haze.  Finally, the stars stilled themselves, and he pushed himself up onto his elbows.  "What a trip!"  X laughed, then looked back at the chaser.

"You know, I don't think Deitzel's gonna be happy you wrecked ANOTHER chaser," the Blue said lowly, looking back at the beastly machine.  It had been going at such a screaming-high speed when it wrecked, it had been folded neatly in half.

"Deitzel's never happy," the Red replied, getting up.  He looked about in the darkness, but now with only the dim light from the sapphire crystal on his helmet, he couldn't really see much of anything.  X, seeking out his own chaser which was laying belly-up on the ground, groaned.

"Oh great.  Tires're trashed.  This thing'll never get us back to HQ..." he mumbled, staring at the machine.  Zero just laughed.

"Looks like we're walking, then!" he laughed uncaringly.  X looked at him.

"We could just _teleport_ back, like always?" he said slowly.  Zero tossed his hand at that notion.

"Pah!  It's a fine night, and some walking might do you some good, buddyboy!"

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"WHY did we have to race for AN HOUR?!" X groaned, plodding along behind his crimson companion.  Zero, severely annoyed with his friend's constant complaining, was just about to make a cutting retort when he froze stock still.  Raising his hand, he glanced back at X, who he could see only as a vague sillhouette, with a glaring red point in his forehead.

"Ssshhhh...listen..." the Red hissed quietly, looking about in the darkness.  For the umpteenth time in the past month, he snarled and cursed whoever decided to make a reploid with virtually no nightvision.  The stars may have been out, but the moon was enshrouded by a thick blanket of clouds.  X, his superior eyes piercing into the blackness, saw a suggestion of movement in the corner of his vision, and whipped his head around to follow it.  The movement ghosted along the ground, ever just barely out of full sight, and soft, brittle cracklings and shufflings of grass whispered in the still air.  X's breath was frozen in his throat; what was it?  Finally, the movement stopped, and he got a good look at the cause.  His expression changed from one of tense anticipation, to one of curiousity.

"It's a wolf," he said softly, watching the animal as it watched him, its golden eyes shining in the starlight.  Eyes which, to X's keen vision, seemed strangely...hollow.  There was no spark of animalistic intelligence, no glimmer of life.  They were as flat and gleaming as polished metal.

"What's a wolf doing down here?" Zero whispered, mostly to himself.  X knew no more than he as to why one of the packhunting beasts would have wandered this far from their forested homes.  The wolf stared at them silently, its head low, tail hanging limp.  Its dark fur, ebony brushed lightly with silver, rippled as it walked slowly towards them, its ears flattened back.  X, intensely curious and hoping not to frighten the wild animal, slowly crouched down, holding out a hand towards the wolf.  But its empty gaze stayed fixed on Zero, orbs of burnished gold locked with those of sapphire blue.  Zero, standing completely still, suppressed an urge to fidget under that unwavering stare; why was the beast looking at him like that?

A human, faced in this situation, would have yelped, and maybe cowered.  But as the wolf suddenly leapt off the ground, soaring as though it had invisable wings, Zero responded with the instincts of the Hunter; he ducked into a roll, the wolf gliding soundlessly over his back, and came up, saber in hand but inactive, his stance ready for battle.  The wolf, its eyes still blank, turned and came again.  Zero cut across with his saber on reaction, but there was no blade; the animal was wild, and probably starving to death; he didn't want to kill it.  However, his instincts screamed instructions at him, the battle fever that infected his mind whenever he was faced with a threat, and he had to stop himself from striking upwards in a vicious kick when the wolf scrabbled its claws against his armor.  He turned and began to run, X following his lead, but the wolf tailed him.  He kicked on his dash jets, the small burst of bluish flames and intense pressure throwing him forward across the terrain.  The wolf, not to be daunted so soon, leapt into the air at its fleeing target, and locked its sleek jaws onto his mane of golden hair that streamed wildly behind him, digging its claws into the earth and jerking its head.  As Zero was flipped suddenly backwards, his jets sputtering out, he knew that there was nothing natural about the beast; no flesh and blood wolf was strong enough to brake a dashing reploid!

"_GET OFF!!!_" he screamed, jabbing his fist into the wolf's ribs, as its slavering jaws locked onto his arm; ribs that cracked and snapped like those of any organic creature, sending blood coughing up from the creature's lungs, hot, rich, acrid-smelling blood.  But those fangs were too sharp; they dug wickedly into Zero's arm, slashing effortlessly through synthetic skin and metal plating, cutting into wiring and making dark reploid blood well to the surface.  The wolf coughed once more, its muzzle stained with blood both natural and artificial, and sagged lifelessly, its teeth still buried in the Hunter's arm, its empty eyes still locked with his own.  He shook the dead beast off, staring down at it in a confused state of disbelief, then at his gouged arm.  What sort of creature had that been, to bite straight through metal?

"Zero!" X squealed.  It was intended to be a cry of concern, but the Blue's naturally high-pitched voice made it come out funny, and Zero couldn't help but shake his head and laugh.  Then he winced, grabbing his arm to staunch the bloodflow.

"What the heck do you think that was, X?" he asked his fellow Hunter, who could only stare down at the dead wolf.  

"Maybe somebody at HQ can find out...speaking of which, I think we're done walking.  I'm teleporting back, and I'll drag you along by your hair if I have to!" X said sternly, and Zero snickered.  He didn't doubt it; the little bugger was fiercly protective.  His statement reminded him of something else, however.  He let go of his arm in order to reach back over his shoulder and pull his thick ponytail forth to where he could see it.

"Dratted mutt!" he growled, seeing the rather destroyed quality of his precious mane.  Being a reploid, he couldn't simply grow his hair back; like anything else, it would have to be repaired and replaced, and it could be a mess trying to get just the right shade of golden blonde.  It was very important that his hair stay the same color.  X chuckled at him, and slowly, almost tenderly, lifted the corpse of the wolf from its resting place.  He twitched uncomfortably when its head lolled on its neck, its flat eyes staring glazedly straight through the Blue.  He switched up his internal teleportation device, mentally punching in the coordinates, and a bright globe of energy wound about him, encasing him and the wolf as their forms were defragmented into a simple form of energy, much akin to light, and capable of passing through almost anything.  A whitish streak marred the perfected blackness of the sky as he blipped away, and Zero followed suit.

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"Hmmmm...this is something quite unusual," the human medic said at last.  He was studying the results of the wolf's examination, and...there was nothing unusual.  Its teeth were the usual hardness and sharpness of any canine's, its jaw muscles were not particularly overdeveloped, and there was, apparently, no reason why it had been able to shred through Zero's armor the way it had.  And the Red Hunter most certainly wasn't wearing unnusually weakened armor; it, too, had been tested.  The stuff was as endurant as ever.

"It doesn't make much sense..." Zero muttered, reading over his shoulder.  The medic jumped; he hadn't known Zero was there.

"No, it doesn't.  This will take a plenty long time to figure out," the medic replied, flipping through the pages of data.  Zero was distracted from his pondering, however, when X tapped him on the shoulder.

"Time to head out, buddyboy.  We've got cleanup up north."  Zero rolled his eyes with a frustrated sigh.

"Why can't someone else do it?  Dangit, we've got all those other units for a reason!  The Hunters aren't just a ragtag handful anymore!"

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Zero was panting.  And he had no idea why.

The minion-esque Mavericks he had been batting around were nothing.  His saber, his own precious bolt of green lightning, could destroy a dozen in a row, and he wouldn't slow a bit.  And yet, he was panting heavily, as though he had overexerted himself, and the false sweat of a reploid ran down his face.  _Why?_

He tossed his blade upwards almost carelessly, the hilt spinning.  Just before the energy sputtered and died, it cleaved a flying drone neatly in half, the robot bursting into a small fireball before its charred bits even began to fall.  The Red Hunter caught his saber hilt and reactivated it, and plowed down a row of Ball De Voux which had been wandering aimlessly.  He wiped a hand across his face, staring at his hand, which dripped wetly.  There was something very wrong about this.

He didn't have any more time to worry about this unnaturally happening, however.  A Bee Blader, its broad blades churning the air viciously, raised its squat, bloated frame into the sky.  How had he not noticed a Bee Blader?!  He really wasn't very sharp today.  

The jagged mouthparts of the grotesque wasp charader jerked apart, and the barrel of its gattler—a devestating weapon that used a combination of plasmic energy charges and leaden ammo—whirled outwards and clicked into place.  The great drone hovered unsteadily, weaving up and down through the air, its huge bulk always just barely supported by its chopperblades, and spat its deadly fire at Zero.  He hopped back along the ground, and dashed to the side, escaping the line of fire.  While the Bee Bladers were powerful and heavily armored, they were slow to react and difficult to get turned around.  The Crimson Wonder came in for a vicious strike at its flank, his saber ripping a jagged, spark-spitting hole through its armor.  With a spurt of black robotic fluid, the entire thing exploded outwards in a wicked chemical-born fireball, knocking Zero away and eating the Blader into an empty, hulking shell that hit the ground with a shuddering crash, smashing into an unrecognizable heap of shrapnel.  Such was the fate of Bee Bladers.

Zero looked at the fallen corpse of his metallic adversary, and suddenly, pain seared through his arm; the same arm that the wolf had shredded the night before.  It was gone as suddenly as it came, but it left him feeling even more exhausted than before, his chest heaving as he gasped for breath.  And then, staring at the charred bulk of the Blader, he was struck by a sudden, animalistic desire; throwing back his head, he squeezed his blue eyes shut and howled, a long, loud, bloodcurdling sound of vicious triumph.  Even the stupid Maverick drones, with nothing more than basic programming in their heads, stared in a moment of silent shock at the red reploid.  Then Zero, feeling more spent than he had even when torn to pieces as the aftermath of his sacrificial blow to Vile, dropped like a broken puppet, splayed on the ground, fully unconscious.

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"Zero...Zero..."

The first thing that the Red Hunter was aware of was a severe desire to take out whoever was calling his name like that.  It was getting ANNOYING.  What were they, some sort of broken record?!

With a snarl, the reploid sprang to sudden life, latching his fingers around the offender's throat, dragging them downwards to stare into their terrified eyes...terrified _green_ eyes.

"Oh.  Sorry, X," he said casually, letting the blue reploid go.  X hacked, rubbings his throat, which had been in the process of being oh-so-slowly crushed in Zero's grip.

"Remind me not to keep you company after repairs EVER again," the black-haired Blue said finally, glaring at Zero.  The Red shrugged.

"Hey!  I said sorry!  You don't go around waking people up like that," Zero replied, crossing his arms.  It was then that he noticed something very important...his armor was missing.  Not all of it; just the right shoulderplate and armplates.  He blinked, looking around, and discovered the crimson armor stacked neatly at the bedside.  Zero back up at X blankly.  "Might I have an explanation for this strange happening?"

"We were trying to find something out," X replied.  He shrugged.  "Found nothing.  Absolutely nothing to explain why you passed out like that."

Zero just frowned.  Why would they connect his wolf-shredded arm to why he lost consciousness on the battlefield...?  Suddenly, he felt slightly paranoid, of the medics, of the Hunters...and of X.  He shook his head.  That was stupid!

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His image flickered in and out, like some sort of fog-born apparition.  With every step he vanished, to reappear some feet ahead of where he had been.  His eyes were deep purple, endless pits filled to the brim with deadly currents, hidden just beneath the surface, waiting to entrap their victims.  His hair was the color of steel, and held back away from his face in a thick braid.  His reploid armor was of a thin, flexable material, not quite metal, not quite leather, but some odd blend of the two, forming a dull, ash-colored enwrapment all about him.  At his side, a blade—a true blade, of gleaming silver and edged with precious crushed diamonds—hung like the fang of a resting viper, waiting to bite through flesh and metal alike.  

And he was hunting something.

He paused suddenly, crouching swiftly down.  His black-gloved fingers brushed lightly against the tips of the grass blades, blades that were stained e'er so slightly with drops of rich wolf blood and dark reploid fluid.  The strange reploid's eyes narrowed.

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Zero battered away with the training blade, cracking the metal across the helmet of his sparring partner.  The opponent, a rookie reploid who had the unfortunate luck to be obsessed with sabers, crumpled swiftly to the ground.  Zero looked down at him, one eyebrow raised.

"You let down your guard!  Why?" he asked, holding down a hand to help the discombobulated Hunter to his feet.  He shook his head, some of his curly auburn hair escaping from under the rim of his oddly high-riding helmet.  Zero made a mental note that the fellow's helmet did not exactly fit correctly.

"Nothin'.  Just a weird trick of the light.  Surprised me," he stated, his voice thick.  It was always that way.  Zero, however, was curious.

"What 'weird trick of the light' should be sufficient to make a Hunter drop his guard?"

"Your eyes changed color...they looked gold," he replied, dropping his gaze shamefacedly.  Zero's eyebrows knitted together, and then he jabbed the rookie with his training blade.

"Well, light tricks or no, you're not done yet."  He snatched the rookie's training blade off the ground and handed it to him.  Then, with sudden ferocity, he wailed his saber against the Hunter's shoulderplate, and the startled reploid responded by smacking the blade away—a bit late for that, as Zero noted—and made a jab for his teacher.  The Red Hunter dodged smoothely to oneside, and slapped his false blade against the Hunter's other shoulderplate.

"You're dead twice over, chum.  Where's your guard, your reaction speed?" Zero asked, his voice harsh.  The rookie shook his head vigorously, and charged at Zero, his blade twirling, feinting and dipping and stabbing at all angles.  He knew Zero was going easy on him.  He wasn't unconsiderable, but the Red Hunter had no match when it came to his favored weapon.  But the rookie may have done better, had he not been distracted by the way that, whenever he was countering an attack or making a strike, his teacher's eyes seemed to flash with a golden sheen.


	2. Gold Eyes, Silver Fangs

Red Midnight

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Chapter 2:

Gold Eyes, Silver Fangs

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Disclaimer: Megaman-X is not mine.  My original characters are, however.

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Author's Notes: Return of the Second Chapter.

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_"Echoes of darkness..._

_Starlight swallowed whole,_

_And shot through,_

_The fire bridge,_

_To the abyss of endless night._

_Wind howling trees..._

_Singing their symphony,_

_Bitter mourning,_

_A nocturnal medly,_

_Of the savageries of silence."_

Zero opened his eyes in a flood of blackness.  _What...where...?_  That voice, vaguely feminine...strangely familiar.  Reciting softly its morbid verses...it echoed noislessly in his head, beckoning him to listen closely, to plead for more.

"Who's there?"  His voice seemed too loud.  It echoed weirdly, sending stray bands of silver ricocheting from its heart, veining the black.  The Crimson Wonder shook his head slowly.  This was a dream.  That was clear.

"Yes, Zero," the sudden, soft hiss was lulling, drawing him away from his thoughts, towards a calm darkness.  He fought back, shaking his head again, clenching his hands into fists.  "_Yessssssssssssss_...Zero...this is a dream...but it would be better for you to forget that...for now."  Zero had only a second to wonder, before suddenly the world dropped out from under him and he was falling, plunged into a sea of blacks and silvers, laced together like spiderwebs.  And...he saw.

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The world rushed by, the night as bright as daytime, Moon calling sadly, begging to stay, to cast the world in her dripping ivory and remain, a placid guardian of the sky.  The bitter, raging Sun lay sleeping far below the mountains, a glaring orb of fire, but would soon be raising, arcing himself back upwards to push his gentler sister away, his fur of so many colors that Wolf could not name them.  The time of Wolf was now, under the enchanted light of Moon's watchful eye, her fur of blacks and indigos and deep purples; such a glorious fur.  And running with her, under her loving gaze, Wolves winked with silvered glances towards their past home.  For Wolf made only one life on Earth; the true home of Wolf was the night sky, running on forever.

And he was Wolf.  No name graced him, none that Man would consider a name; for they were all one, born of Mother Moon's love for the world, striving to run, run, as they were born to do.  He was Wolf, as was his brother, and his sister, and his sister's cubs.  One and all, they were Wolf, connected by spiderwebbed lines, knowing one another by heart.  But even though he was Wolf, he was also another.  He was himself, a single love of his Mother Moon, and therefore, he must have his own self.  In the hunt, Wolf must be known from Wolf by calls and glances.  And in the mind of Wolf, these meant things, important things, precious things.  Things of the night and the sky and the leaves and the winds.  And so as he was Wolf, he was also himself, Nightsbreath.  Nightsbreath was not his name; it was his self, drastically shortened.  His self was "The Final Breath of the Midnight Cricket, Just Before It Silences As the Lake Shows Moon to Herself and the First Morningbird Sings."

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"Go...'way..." X mumbled to no one.  He opened his eyes, to discover his quarters completely empty, with nothing but a soft bit of moonlight slinking in the window to mar the blackness.  What had woken him up?  He knew he had heard...something.

And he heard that something again.  A soft, slow shuffle.  Something slinking about.  _Where?_  The sound came again, hushed, furtive.  _Under the bed!_

The reploid leapt from his comfortable covers, rolling across the ground to face the bed.  In his mind, all sorts of old stories raced, as he snatched up the forarm plate of his armor from its place, stacked on a shelf for just that purpose.  Clicking it into place, he immidiately activated his buster, and it began a low whine as it drew in air, feeding it through its chambers to keep from overheating as the charge grew.  

"Who's there?" he growled, keeping his buster trained on the shadowy underworld of beneath his bed.  The response he got was not one he would have expected.

A…_beast_…burst out from under the bed, sending the entire thing flipping back and away, crashing to the earth.  It ran straight for the reploid, a streak of crimson, and its claws were shredding at him before he could recover from his shock.  Its blows knocked loose the forarmplate, and the charge revolted against him, shocking upwards through X's arm as though to accentuate the fact that he had been struck.  Then the beast was gone, and stood, trembling, in the center of the room, legs splayed, head low, eyes wild.  It was a wolf.

And what a wolf it was.  It was the color of fresh blood spilled, with a streak of livid gold along its back.  Its eyes were a pure, sapphiric blue, flecks of gold giving them a metallic sheen.  But it was unnatural; its forepaws were not paws at all, but hands, humanoid, save coated with rich fur, and each finger tipped with a claw.  Its torso was not the shape of a wolf's; it was far too humanlike, and its legs were longer than they should have been.  Because of all this, its stance was awkward, unnatural.  X didn't have time to put on his armor; the beast came straight at him once more, a snarl burbling up in its throat.  But the snarl was what shocked X more than anything else, for the beast spoke.

"NO!" was its roar, a roar in a voice the Blue _knew_ he recognized, save that it was distorted, changed.  X dodged its slashing claws, and it whirled, kicking his feet out from under him, and pounced.  He latched his hands around its jaws, keeping the snapping, fang-filled maw from tearing into his throat.  He kicked the beast in the gut, and his foot met metal; solid, hard metal.  The beast grunted—again, in that voice that sent bells ringing in X's head—and tried to jerk away.  X clung tightly to the thing's muzzle, as it tossed its head, snarling viciously.  He flipped himself over, wrapping his legs around its middriff, and it bucked like a wild horse, trying to throw him off its back.  One paw tore at him, but he refused to let go; and with his legs, he was slowly crushing inwards on the thing's sides, squeezing the air out of its lungs.  It gasped and panted, twisting its head in a desperate attempt to catch its jaws in X, until finally it crumpled over, unable to maintain the combined weight of itself and the reploid on its back with so little oxygen available.  As soon as it hit the floor, still writhing and snapping, X dared to let go with one hand in order to slug it across the back of the head.  The fiery light went out of its eyes, as it groaned softly in its distorted voice, losing consciousness.  X jumped off, snagging up and donning his armor, and turned back.  And stopped dead.  There was no wolf-beast laying unconscious on his floor, no vicious monster enwrapped in red fur.  There was Zero, breathing shallowly, just beginning to stir in wakefullness.  And with absolutely nothing on, but X was in too much shock to worry about that.  Slowly, the Crimson raised his head, blinking confusedly at his surroundings.  But his eyes were not the same.  They were shot through with gold.

"X...?" he gasped slowly, then hacked.  "What the heck just happened?  I feel like I just got stuck in a trash compactor."  X stumbled, though he hadn't been moving, and fell heavily to the floor.  This _WAS NOT POSSIBLE_!!!

"Zero...it...can't...be..." the Blue said softly, staring at his best friend.  "It's not possible.  It isn't!  _IT CAN'T BE!!!_"  Zero pulled himself up into a sitting position, baffled and distraught, and twitched more than slightly when he suddenly realized he was lacking clothes.  

"Whoa, X!  Calm down!  Don't go knocking yourself out without at least telling me what on earth just happened!" the Red Hunter said, grabbing X's shoulders and staring into his wild green eyes.  X, panting thinly, stared back for a few tense moments...then his eyes rolled backwards into his skull, and he slumped forwards against his friend.  Zero sighed.

"What on earth could scare you _that much_, X?"

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Zero stretched and yawned.  Sure, he was supposed to be training his rookies, but at the moment he was only supervising, watching as they sparred with each other.  He hadn't gotten much sleep, but he doubted that was why he was so tired; something weird had happened last night.  He had woken up buck naked in X's room, which had been trashed, and X himself terrified out of his wits.  He hadn't even gotten a chance to see the blue reploid yet since then.  No chance to ask what on earth had happened.  He figured the Blue was avoiding him, and if any of Zero's suspicions were even remotely true, he wouldn't blame the bugger.  He shuddered just thinking about it..._oy_.

"Hey," a rookie suddenly said, jabbing his superior in the shoulder.  Zero, shaking himself out of his thoughts, looked over at the Hunter-in-training.

"What?" he asked sharply.  The rookie pointed over to a corner of the training area.

"Aren't you supposed to _not_ let them kill each other?" was all the rookie said, and Zero looked over, to see a trio of reploids in the midst of a chaotic brawl.  One was apeish, one an ibis-like bird, and one a monitor lizard.

"Hey hey hey!" he shouted, charging over to the fighting reploids, pulling the ape off the ibis, in the process knocking the lizard away as well.  The ibis, his feathers a total dissaray, shrieked and squawked enragedly.

"_She_ started it!" he accused, pointing at the ape, who bared her jagged teeth at the bird, slamming her huge fists together.  The lizard, the only one of the three who seemed calm, simply slicked back his odd crest of aquamarine hair and straightened the collarplate of his armor, which had been snapped out of place somewhere during the fight.  He rolled his head on his thin neck to stare over at Zero, and while nothing showed in his metallic gold-shot-green eyes, the Red Hunter suddenly got a strong impression of contempt and disgust from the reptillian reploid.

"Thank you for your intervention, Sir," he said, his voice soft and neutral.  Where had that impression that the lizard despised him come from?  "I was attempting to end the fighting, but it seems that is the job of the instructor.  Unfortunately, you were, until now, apparently preoccupied."  Zero really didn't like this fellow; while everything he said was perfectly respectful and unassuming, and his expression betrayed nothing, he just _knew_ that the little creep thought he was shabby, lazy, and inadequat.  But _how_ did he know?  Well...he couldn't worry himself about that.

"Now, how did this get started?" he asked, but when both started shouting at the same time, he put his hands to his head and grimaced.  

"Okay, nevermind!  You know what?  I don't _care_!  Work it out, and _NO FIGHTING_!  Not like that!  This is a sparring room, not a bar!"  The pair looked down at the floor abashedly, then glared hatefully at one another.  Zero sighed.  He already knew there was going to be another fight; he could literally smell the impending violence building, like a rising storm.

Suddenly the Hunter blinked.  He actually _could_ smell something, and his mind automatically interpreted it as hatred, aggression, intended violence.  But if he thought about it...there were a million other things, enough to make his head spin.  _WHAT THE HECK?!_


	3. Steel and Silver

Red Midnight

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Chapter 3:

Steel and Silver

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Disclaimer: Megaman-X is not mine.  My original characters are.

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Author's Notes: 'Round and 'round and 'round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows…actually, it stops here.  This chapter has been re-written a number of times...

For the record, Iyl's name is pronounced like "Isle."

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He paused, his grip on his blade shifting.  A silver spark ran up to its tip like a reversed raindrop.

"…hello," he said at last.  The Hunter who stood before him, a simple watchman leaning against the front door, clearly considered him a weirdo.  But then,  he'd never been that sociable, and dealing with other sentient creatures wasn't really his specialty anyway.  He didn't care.  "Skipping the pleasentries…let me in."  The watchman seemed slightly taken aback by that unadorned demand.

"Why should I?" he asked after a moment.  "Who are you, and what's your business here?"  The stranger was silent for so long, the sentry began to wonder if he hadn't heard him.

"Nevermind.  I'm already inside…" the ash-enshrouded fellow murmured at last.  That got a confused stare from the watchman, but then the reploid had vanished, like a whisp of fog in sunlight.  The watchman whirled about, looking, but there was no sign of the stranger anywhere.

"Hey!  Where'd you go?!  Get _back_ here!  You can't just…run off like—" the Hunter's statement was cut off in a choked gurgle as the stranger materialized in front of him like a mirage, his silver fang of a blade biting through synthetic skin, metal plating, and complex wiring, putting a red-weeping hole in the other reploid's throat.  For a blade like that, that should've been impossible...but who was he to care what was or was not impossible?  The killer stood their calmly, waiting the moment it took for the sentry's life to flee completely from his impaled body, then drew his blade back, wiping it on the brittle grass before slipping it back into its sheath.  His deep purple eyes flickered, and his voice was completely flat.

"I never went anywhere, idiot."

Uncaring of what would happen when the Hunters found their sentry was dead—as he knew they would very soon, even if they were all morons—he strode over the body and into the building.  He was certain they would catch him and lock him up until they could get around to sorting something out about him—Maverick or no?  Not Maverick, obviously, so why had he done it?—but that was all the better.

_______________________

"So who did it?" Zero questioned.  The other Hunter shrugged.

"Well, not like we recognized 'im…the perpotrator's locked up for the momen'.  Jus' waltzed in like 'e 'adn't jus' killed someone.  Real tall chap, gray 'air in a braid, gray armor—right weird armor, 'at is, can't figger out what it's made of—an' the most unusual weapon you ever saw," he replied.  "Thing is, I seriously doubt 'e's Mav'rick.  Don' act nothin' like one, after all."  The Red considered all this for a long moment.

"...I guess I'll go talk to him myself, then."

_______________________

He leaned against the wall without concern.  His armor had been stripped—rather roughly for his tastes, but oh well—and since he hadn't habitually worn much under the stuff, he was in only a pair of knee-length black shorts, arms folded across his chest, casually hiding at least some of the countless criss-crossing scars on his body.

"You're going to ask why I killed your man, why I didn't even put up a fight afterwards, what my name is, where I've come from, why I'm here at all..." he murmured as soon as the red-armored Hunter appeared.  He had no idea who that was—certainly didn't care enough about Hunters to learn who their most prestigeous members were—and he didn't care.

Zero, looking at the stranger with a sort of annoyed curiousity, just nodded.  "So start spilling."

_Honesty is the best policy, heh._

"My name is Iyl.  Where I came from has no bearing on anything; it was a nowhere little place on the border of the Arctic.  I didn't put up a fight because being here suits my purposes.  I killed the watchman because he didn't matter, and he was in my way.  And..." here the deadly purple eyes narrowed, and a slight smile flickered at the corners of his mouth.  "...I'm here to hunt down something...dangerous..."  Zero's mouth thinned to a cross line, and he folded his arms.

"All right, what is this supposedly dangerous thing you're hunting?" he demanded.  "And why is it worth killing a Hunter?"  Iyl tilted his head slowly, expression back to its calm lack of concern.

"It's worth it because it'll kill countless numbers if I don't stop it in its tracks..." the smile was back again, drifting into place, gone.  Zero got the distinct impression that this strange reploid was entirely out of his mind.  "...and what it is...a wolf."

That stopped Zero cold, his mind racing back to his encounter to with the supernaturally powerful canine.  Iyl did not fail to notice the blonde's change in expression, and suddenly he was closer, nearly to the powerfield barrier of his holding cell.

"Yessssss..." the steel-haired reploid was hissing now, and his eyes were practically luminescant.  "A wolf.  Not a normal wolf...this wolf was something I was after for a long, long time.  I've encountered it before, but it always escaped, one way or another...a wolf with strength not belonging to its kind, a wolf with empty eyes.  A very, very dangerous wolf, a killer wolf.  A wolf that will eat anything, flesh or metal, it cared not.  However, I encountered a problem.  Apparently, someone killed my prey...the target has shifted..."

"...what do you mean?" Zero asked, voice very quiet.

"This wolf is extremely difficult to kill, you see...permanently, at least.  Its blood carries its will, its hungry desires.  All it needs to do is share its blood with another, and that other...well...before long, they will replace the deceased incarnation, to carry on its destruction."  He watched Zero intently, already certain.  "Have you ever heard of a werewolf?  Of course you have.  Everyone's heard of werewolves.  Well...this is a real one.  A demon wolf, spawned from an unknown.  There were originally four of them, but I've killed three...the last one was much more resourceful."  He paused, waiting to see if Zero would speak; as if the Red could say anything at all, with what he was hearing right now.

"You know what I'm talking about," Iyl said softly.  "You've met the wolf, haven't you?  You're the one who killed it.  It bit you, didn't it?  The blood on the grass.  I found it, you can't lie to me."  He grinned.  "You're Wolf now, just haven't shifted yet.  Have there been any mysterious deaths?  Anyone dismembered, mauled in the night?  Wolf comes out at night, and it kills."  He started laughing, and Zero, not even thinking about what he was doing, turned and ran.

_________________________

X had been dodging around, avoiding Zero since the whole "incident," but when the Red came barrelling down on him out of nowhere, there was no way he could get around talking with the blonde.

"Ah, hey, Zero, what's wrong?" the Blue asked, half-heartedly at first...but he completely forgot about avoiding his friend when he saw the absolutely panicked look in Zero's gold-shot-blue eyes, and the way he was panting.  Zero never got out of breath just from running.

"What happened that night?!" Zero demanded immidiately, voice slightly strained.  "When I woke up in your room?"  X took a step back, away from the reploid.

"What's going on?" X demanded.  "What—" He didn't get to finish his question, when Zero grabbed him by his shoulders and shoved him against the wall.  

"Tell me what happened!"  X gulped, genuinely afraid, then, in a trembling voice, recounted the midnight attack by the great, red-furred wolf.  As he spoke, Zero's expression changed from desperate panic to despair, and he let go of X suddenly, stepping back.  He looked at his friend blankly for a long few moments, seemed on the brink of saying something, when another Hunter, decked in full armor, came running up the corridor.

"Zero!  The prisoner got out!  He's torn through every attempt to catch him, and he's heading this way!"  The Hunter appeared to have paused for a moment, then he looked up, his eyes lit up with surprise before they glazed over.  Iyl, his armor and weapon recovered, shoved the Hunter over, his blade wet with dark reploid blood.  

"Hello Wolf," Iyl hissed, grinning.  He looked crazier than ever as he whipped his sword up, and X was left no time to wonder what the heck was going on as the reploid charged, gray braid whipping behind him.  He swiped at the blonde, but Zero was already away, snatching his saber hilt from its holster and switching it alight.  

To X, the battle was really just a high-paced blur, as the two swordsman went at one another.  Purple eyes were locked with ones that were suddenly more gold than blue, neither blinking, locked in a fluid dance of swordplay.  Iyl's supposedly metal blade was not cut apart by Zero's beamsaber, no more than it could go through the neon fang of energy.

Zero's Hunter Instinct seemed to've filled his false veins with fire, and he moved in an unbelievable pattern of strike, parry, strike, block and counterstrike...every twitch of his wrist caused a flicker of green, but his steely-haired opponent evaded or blocked every attack.  And then, suddenly, he spotted a repetitive hole in Iyl's defence.  The only problem was, he could never manage to get his saber up in position in time without being stabbed through...but something dark that surfaced in his mind had a solution to that.

_Bite through, Nightsbreath._  There was no other thought, and he was blinded by the refracted, distorted image of the moon, hanging full and swollen with ivory over a lake that reflected it in utter perfection...when his mind returned to its rightful place, he was shocked by the sharp, acrid taste in his mouth, and the sound that came to his ears; a low, gurgling cry.  It wasn't until then he realized his teeth were sunken into Iyl's throat, and the reploid was pinned to the floor beneath him.  He pulled back sharply, as though he'd been burned, and stared down in horror, straight into unblinking, blank purple eyes.  He swiped his hand across his mouth in an unconscious gesture, then stood.  He didn't look around, didn't look to see what X thought of this.  He spoke quietly.

"I...I'm sorry X...y'know when that wolf bit me?  Heh...heh heh..." his voice was strange.  "Well...I guess...I'm some sorta werewolf...I..."  He trailed off, stared at the dead Iyl.  "...goodbye, X."  The Blue was suddenly beside him, his emerald eyes filled with a mixture of fear and despair.

"No, Zero!" he cried, denying what Zero was obviously inferring.  "There's some way this can be beaten, I'm sure of it."  Zero shook his head, still watching the corpse of the reploid who'd been hunting Wolf.  "We...just...just have to try..."  But X made a mistake when he laid a hand on the silent Zero's shoulder.  

Wolf surged to life in a single bound, and the Hunter's eyes flashed solid, hollow gold as he turned, lit saber in hand.  X froze, eyes wide in shock, slowly looking down at the neon blade that had skewered him straight through the middle.  He didn't say a thing, just looked up at Zero, eyes filled with tears, and crumpled backwards in a heap.  For just a moment, Zero's gaze was perfect ocean blue once more, as he stumbled backwards.  Then a twisted grin spread across his face, and his vision blurred with tears.

"Oh no, Wolf," he growled at the dark apparition in his mind, "you won't win this one so easily..."  Turning his saber in his hand, he drove his precious weapon straight through his own chest.


End file.
